Jewel Cave

South Dakota Air and Space Museum

Saturday was another day where I really felt pretty awful, so I wasn’t inclined to go do anything. I took an hour or so and planned out what I wanted to do during the rest of my time in Sturgis, and then basically the only other thing I did all day was read a couple more books.

Sunday I wasn’t feeling all that much better, but I did try and go to the South Dakota Air & Space Museum, unfortunately it was closed (for no apparent reason). Fortunately when I went back Monday morning, it was at least partially open, so I got to walk around the planes they had outside. They had probably 20-25 planes and rockets, mostly from the 1950s-1980s. Some of my favorites were this YT-38 Talon, the first supersonic training jet, the Y in the name indicates it was a prototype, and this was the second T-38 Talon ever built:

The B-1B Lancer is cool because it has wings that can be adjusted from this swept back position to be almost perpendicular to the body, almost doubling its wingspan to change the lift of the aircraft:

The B-52D Stratofortress is cool just because of the sheer size:

The inside of the museum was still closed, but the hanger it was in was pretty small, so I’m not sure how impressive it would have been anyways. Overall, it was a pretty cool stop that is close to the highway, and the price was right: free.

Jewel Cave

Normally caves wouldn’t really be my thing, but there are two in the area that I was going to check out, mostly so I could get the stamp in my National Parks book. I was able to book Jewel Cave (National Monument) in advance, but Wind Cave (National Park) was going to be first come first served. Unfortunately the elevator for Wind Cave broke, so they cancelled all tours until they could get the parts in to fix it. Guess that is what I get for putting it off until my last day in the area. Anyways, I still got to go to Jewel Cave, and it ended up being a pretty cool and interesting tour. They have the fastest elevators in the state of South Dakota, and they take you down 250 feet underground to start things off. The tour I did was only 80 minutes (seemed like enough time for me to be underground), and it was mostly paved or 700+ steel steps. It got the name Jewel Cave from the calcite crystals that cover a large portion of the cave, this slab of crystals was about eight inches thick:

Most of the pictures I took are pretty dark (duh), and are not that interesting without explanation (which I can’t really provide), but I thought this was cool, the way the water dripped in here formed a ribbon that looks like bacon, but this strip was probably 10 feet tall:

Travel Day 1 - Buffalo, WY

One last thing that I wanted to see that was kind of in the area, but very much on the way to my next stop, was Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, so rather than make the 90 minute drive just to see the tower and then drive back to Sturgis, I decided I’d try and stop on Tuesday, on my way to Buffalo. I was a little nervous, because even though most large attractions are setup to handle trailers and RVs, it still adds a little bit of complexity. It all ended up working out, they had a parking lot shortly after entering the park specifically for dropping your trailer, and I’m glad I did that, because while trailers were still allowed at the top, parking was very limited. It was easier to get a spot for just my truck than it would have been to get one for my trailer too, so even though it takes 10 minutes or so to unhitch and another 10 to hitch, I still think I saved a lot of time. I didn’t spend a lot of time here, just got my book stamped, a few quick pictures, and then was back on the road.

I left the vehicles in this one to give you some sense of scale:

In total I did about 208 miles over about five hours, which included unhitching my trailer, driving up to Devil’s Tower, driving back down, re-hitching up my trailer, etc., and ended up at a pretty nice camp site in Buffalo:

Travel Day 2 - Billings, MT

Wednesday was by far my most frustrating day on the trip, and it was only a 2.5 hour, 170 mile drive day. I had my first bad gas station experience. One of the challenges of traveling by myself has been finding when and where to stop for gas. In an ideal world, I’d be able to pull up Google Maps and make sure a gas station has adequate space for a trailer to get in and turn around, but I’m not living in that ideal world yet while driving by myself. I ended up stopping because I had passed up the last gas station because it looked too small, but this gas station was too small to pull a trailer through too, and too busy to easily back up. On top of that, the pumps were slow, it took 40 minutes to get about 19 gallons of gas. I guess the good news is it gave me plenty of time to plan/worry about leaving. I ended up getting a little lucky and found a small lull in traffic, and backed up across a street until I was far enough back to make the turn I needed: Fortunately I am much better at backing up, so it was relatively smooth and painless, and there were only four cars waiting on me when I pulled away!

Unfortunately the frustration didn’t end there. Wednesday was also my first time trying Harvest Host, which is a program where you pay a pretty low annual fee, and get to boonedock at a bunch of wineries, breweries, and farms across the US, for no additional cost above the annual fee. They only request that you spend some money at the host, e.g. if you are staying at a winery, buy a bottle of wine from them. Well I found a winery that was about where I wanted to stop for the night and made a reservation. When I showed up though, their parking lot was full, so I was asked to park in the street. This was frustrating because while the streets were extra wide, there was no way I could put out my slide out. It was the first time I was really happy I picked a trailer floor plan that had two doors, so I could still access everything. I also wasn’t thrilled because it was 90 degrees out again, but fortunately a brief storm rolled through in the evening and cooled everything off, and brought a partial double rainbow: The colors of the clouds at sunset was also gorgeous: Add in a few (ok, a lot) of glasses of wine, and overall it wasn’t a terrible experience, just not quite what I had hoped for my first Harvest Host experience:

Travel Day 3 - Ronan, MT

I was planning on a different direction Thursday, but I woke up to a message saying that the Harvest Host I requested for Thursday night had cancelled on me. I was really frustrated and trying to figure out what to do for one more night before my next campground reservation, so I went back to Harvest Host one more time. This time was a jackpot. This stop is a farm/wedding venue, and they have added a mini-campground to the venue as well that is exclusively for wedding guests on the weekends. I can see the Mission Mountains out my window:

They are setup for a wedding tomorrow:

And the best part is the view: